Why 2D Animation HAD To Die

Chicken Little what is it what's going on the sky is falling the sky is falling in 2005 Disney released Chicken Little it was their first fully computer animated film and that freaked a lot of people out at the time because the name Disney had been nearly synonymous with the traditional art of handdrawn 2D animation it felt like the sky was falling and it was within a few years the legendary Studio would put out its last traditionally animated films and the art itself would be allowed to wither and left to die what are you doing giving

you your reward your Eternal reward but before we get into how it all went down why not take a moment to subscribe to the nerdstalgic channel when we speak of traditional animation we are generally referring to the process of 2D movement achieved by drawing each individual frame by hand and while 1906 is humorous phases of funny faces and 1908s fantasmagory took the first baby steps in the development of the medium most people now consider 1914s guardi the dinosaur to be the first proper Fay into traditional animation over the early Decades of the 20th century handdrawn

animation slowly grew into an extremely popular form of entertainment and a big business for Hollywood during this period most animated films were created using a process called cell animation in a nutshell the moving characters are drawn or painted on transparent pieces of Celluloid or cells for short and then photographed over unmoving backgrounds the first featurelength animated film ated with this technique was 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarves produced by Walt Disney Studios it's the style of animation Disney used to produce 50 years worth of Classics including Bambi The Jungle Book And The Lion King

and is probably the style they're still most associated with the studio continued to use the technique all the way up to the production of 1990s The Rescuers Down Under which marked the Studio's change over to a digital system yank I think I can do any full thing with regard but the day that would change animation forever was November 22nd 1995 when a relatively little known studio called Pixar released the world's first computer animated feature Toy Story arriving in theaters with a 3D aesthetic that was revolutionary to audiences at the time Toy Story also just happened

to be an unmitigated Triumph of casting and storytelling hey Ham look I'm Picasso I don't get it you un culted swine the movie's overwhelming Success With both critics and audience surprised even Disney President Michael Eisner and Pixar boss Steve Jobs meanwhile Dreamworks Animation run by Jeffrey kenberg the former Disney executive who had originally brought Pixar to the Studio's attention was working on The Prince of Egypt which was scheduled for release in the fall of 1998 the studio hoped the traditionally animated film would make them a major competitor to Disney but through his friendship with Pixar's

John Lasser kenberg learned that Pixar was looking to drop its sophomore effort A Bug's Life in the same time frame but it's a buggy bug world out there princess one of those circle of life kind of things determined to get Pixar to move their release date DreamWorks partnered with computer animation studio PDI on the similarly insect Centric ants which kenberg threatened to release just before A Bug's Life if Pixar didn't back off long story short Pixar didn't back off and The Prince of Egypt didn't go anywhere near the kind of business DreamWorks was hoping for

but in the effort kenberg had unwittingly set up the medium of traditional animation for its demise while he was failing to make waves in the traditional animation business kenberg was also trying to develop an adaptation of William stig's 1990 children's book Shrek I'm going to see this guy far quad right now and get you all off my land and back where you came from Shrek which was animated entirely with computers debuted to rave reviews and was a smash at the box office eventually going on to win the first ever Academy Award for best animated feature

over Pixar's Monsters Inc but more importantly Shrek proved that Pixar wasn't the only Studio who could have a smash hit with a computer animated film The Revelation Inspire DreamWorks to shift its strategy and start seeing itself as a competitor for Pixar rather than Disney you're a monster now tell me where are the others eat me but where Disney had a near Chul hold over the artistic pipeline required to do traditional animation computers allowed animation to be done at a much faster rate and lower price and that meant anyone could get into the game DreamWorks had

let the CGI Genie out of the bottle and the result was going to be more competition in the animation industry I mean what chance does a toy like me have against a Buzz Light your action figure during this period Disney relied on its partnership with Pixar to stay relevant in the computer animation Market but that partnership was due to expire in 2006 and making the situation more dire was that Disney's traditionally animated fair was also seeing diminishing returns movies like Pocahontas Hercules and Mulan were well received and successful but not to the degree that The

Little Mermaid Beauty and the Beast Aladdin and the Lion King had been this in addition to the increasing competition from Dreamworks and Pixar forced Michael Eisner to begin pivoting Disney to producing computer animated films it was horrible you know to to come to this conclusion that only 3D was going to be our future the first result of the shift was Chicken Little although it's been largely forgotten now the movie debuted at number one and was a modest financial success but it struck out with critics and certainly didn't resonate with audiences the way any of Pixar's

movies did if Chicken Little had been a hit Disney might very well have parted ways with Pixar when their deal expired but it was pretty clear that the house of mouse wasn't quite ready to compete at a Disney worthy level in the computer animated film market yet so in 2006 Disney bought Pixar the acquisition however did not stop them from continuing to develop their own non-pixar animated films and in all fairness they did get better than Chicken Little in fact Disney's nonix our computer animated catalog now includes iconic films like Wreck-It Ralph Frozen Moana and

Encanto well then how about we just take that metal and give it to Ralph for once would that be the end of the world Jean now you're just being ridiculous but back in the late ASDS the writing was on the wall for traditional 2D animation in 2009's The Princess and the Frog and 2011's Winnie the Pooh would Mark Disney's final foray into the form that made them a household name it remains as of this moment the last fully traditional animated feature film Disney ever made but traditional animation fans can take heart in the fact that

all hope for the art isn't lost in 2021 Disney Animation announced they were starting a handdrawn 2d animation trainee program led by veteran Disney artists and in 2022 Disney plus released chip Andale Rescue Rangers which featured a hybrid of 2D and 3D animation you remember that weird animation style in the early 2000s where everything looked real but nothing looked right oh yeah that's the stuff was creepy to celebrate its 100th anniversary Disney is also releasing a short film titled Once Upon a studio like Rescue Rangers the short which one longtime Disney animator called a love

letter to traditional animation features traditional handdrawn 2D animation mixed with CGI and liveaction footage it all seems to have been leading up to 2023 is wish which although still partially computer animated will be the first Disney theatrical feature to include traditional handdrawn 2D animation since Winnie the Pooh and while the nod to the is nice and the trend is encouraging for fans of traditional 2D it only highlights how completely computer animation remade the animated feature industry led by a new generation of animators the ever increasing possibilities of computer animation have been reflected in the success

of more experimental films like Sony's hit spiderverse movies and Nickelodeon's new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Mutant Mayhem the price of these adventurous New Visions however shouldn't be the life of a beloved and Powerful art form traditional 2D animation offers creative ERS and audiences a unique aesthetic an experience that draws on over a hundred years of our Collective cultural memories for everything else computer animation can do it can't do that so what do you think do you miss traditional handdrawn animation and what's your favorite animated movie let us know down in the comments below and if

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